BOULDER — Saying everything that partners engaging in a new marriage will say and should say, dignitaries representing Colorado and the Pac-10 Conference took turns Friday on a temporary dais outside of the upper club level of Folsom Field and spoke of their mutual admiration.

They spoke of the “perfect fit” while the glistening Flatirons provided a glorious backdrop.

They talked about the whirlwind of events of the past week and how each side came together to make this joyous day possible. It was time to be glad and giddy, to celebrate and congratulate.

After all, this courtship had been going on for some time. Colorado and the Pac-10 had been chatting — perhaps flirting — for almost two months, soon after Kevin Weiberg was hired by Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott to be his deputy commissioner on April 12.

Weiberg had served as commissioner of the Big 12 Conference for almost 10 years before leaving for Chicago in June 2007 to get the Big Ten Network up and running.

“I had some casual conversation, at Larry’s urging, with Mike Bohn (CU athletic director),” Weiberg said. “So from that point, Mike and I were in communication with one another on and off. It picked up more steam in the last month.”

On Friday, signed documents officially made CU the 11th member of the Pac-10, the first new addition to the league since Arizona and Arizona State arrived from the Western Athletic Conference in 1978.

The transition before CU actually competes in the Pac-10 could be two years, with the 2012-13 athletic year being the target, unless the Big 12 disintegrates sooner. But everyone at Friday’s party, er, news conference, sounded ready to purchase a plane ticket for a West Coast road game right now. Ironically, 30 years ago to the day earlier, Colorado athletics suffered one of its darkest hours when several sports, including baseball and wrestling, were shuttered because of financial problems — or, as some joked, so football coach Chuck Fairbanks could furnish his office in mahogany.

“Three decades after ‘Black Wednesday,’ as bad a day as that was, this is going to go down as the most momentous day in CU athletics,” said CU alumnus Richard Engel, who owns an Aurora tavern.

“Now, we can say to every football player we recruit, ‘We want you to be on that CU team that goes to the Rose Bowl.’ Our basketball teams will get to play at (UCLA’s) Pauley Pavilion. Think about that.”

Apparently CU administrators had — for months.

Bohn said Weiberg was indeed “integral and key” to the negotiations, if they can be called that. Colorado and the Pac-10 must have been smitten from the start. Weiberg said he told Scott that CU “is a very similar institution to the Pac-10 institutions.”

Rumors began circulating in March that the Big Ten might soon expand from its 11 members to a “super conference” of 16 teams. Bohn took notice.

Widening the footprint for the stunningly successful Big Ten Network had convinced that conference to announce last December that it would evaluate the possibility of expansion. What would keep other conferences, Bohn said he wondered at the time, from doing the same?

“I thought this was something I really thought we’d better be on top of,” Bohn recalled. “I was spending a lot of time working to ensure that if something like (Pac-10 expansion) came together, we could take advantage of it.

“I really had a gut feeling that something was going to happen this summer all along, with the way the TV contracts lined up with the Pac-10 and Big 12, and the opportunities for expansion around the country.”

Months ago, rumors began flying that Missouri and Nebraska were Big Ten targets. Even so, Bohn said he went into the Big 12 meetings last week with an open mind of staying in the Big 12.

“To be honest, I went to Kansas City with the idea that it would be important for us to keep our league together,” Bohn said Friday. “But when I was there, I was learning about different discussions that institutions were having with other leagues.”

At last week’s Pac-10 meetings in San Francisco, Scott got the go-ahead from the membership’s CEOs to pursue Colorado, and other schools. Colorado President Bruce Benson hurriedly called a meeting of the school’s board of regents Tuesday evening so they could be updated on an impending offer from the Pac-10. Along with Bohn, chancellor Phil DiStefano and the school’s legal team, everybody gave a thumb’s up for the Pac-10.

Scott applauded the “visionary” Colorado leadership Friday and said during his welcoming speech that “history will reward that first step.”

Of course, the Pac-10 didn’t have to twist the arm of anybody wearing black and gold. There has been a long history of courtship. CU has had eyes for the Pac-10 at least as far back as 1994, when the school rejected an offer from the conference because it had already begun work on a new league, the Big 12.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Tyreek Hill didn’t know what to do when he started hearing thousands of people in Arrowhead Stadium chanting his name, even as he stood all alone on the frozen turf waiting for the punt.